Stage III to remember

I joined this City instance just as Stage 2 ended, while it was resetting. I stepped into Stage 3, Order won both the first two stages.

As Champion, here is what I did as a pug. I know probably not that impressive to a lot of people but for me this was so fun and I killed... everyone.

It also put me 29 Royals away from Full Sovereign. My Shoulders are all I need. Maybe I'll finish my Dark Promise? Then I think i've got every T4 piece of gear worth getting.

How to Spec Your Marauder.

Spec

I get fairly frequent Tells from Marauders who are either just rolling or new to T4 about how to spec effectively for PvP in WAR. This is a good question to have a prepared answer for, so now I've decided to write it all out so I can refer people to this blog with tips on how to spec.

First off, your spec has a lot to do with your Renown Rank, this is pretty obvious, but for a Marauder it is even stronger then it is for many other classes. A lot of classes do not need as long a rotation to kill in this game as the TTK as a Marauder is longer then any other damage class save a Magus, which is about equal. Marauders are required to purchase a lot of their Mastery abilities to get the abilities that they need.

Essentially all the abilities in the Savagery line are usful as well as the tactics with the exception now of Exhaustive Strikes (which used to be the best tactic in this game, now is useless).

Savagery is the best Mainline mastery tree for Marauders by a significant Margin. The Brutality line is only viable as a support tree or in PvE (talk about that later). Monstrosity is not without it's uses, and most Marauders should be specing into Monstro. Do not be fooled by the tooltips in Brutalities Mastery Line, while some of them look inviting they are not as effective as they lead on.

Leveling up in PvP you are going to Focus first on Savagery. Start putting points into this Mastery Tree. The First Tactic Scything Talons is an excellent Tactic, but should be taken later on, not right away. The 160 Weapon Skill and Initiative is very handy to have however you need to get to Thunderous Blows as quickly as possible. TB is probably a Marauder's best single target blow as it hits the hardest + it's Wounds Debuff. TB functions both as your opener and your finisher. Keep pumping points up until Cutting Claw, which by even looking at the tooltip will be the best Armor Debuff that Destruction has in terms of pure debuff, plus it is Undefendable. After taking CC, the next level go back and tact the ST Tactic.

Once you have Cutting Claw, TB and ST it is time to go up the Monsto tree. It will take 10 levels but put your points into the tree up until Concussive Jolt. CJ is Destruction's best Knock Down ability, 3sec and AoE arch infront of you. When you get to R40 and have Terrible Embrace you can Pull and knock your target down. Most Destro seeing this will quickly assist you and kill the target straight on. Once you have CJ you ought to have 3 points left, spec back into Savagery and take Deadly Clutch. DC will make your Tainted Claw vastly improved giving you back %25 of what your target is healed and reducing their heals by %50.

This takes you to R40, and looks like this on the wardb chart.

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=14#11:2600:0:0:9:512:25

Moving up the renown ranks all that you need to do is put points into Savagery and take Draining Swipes, an AP regeneration debuff. With your last Mastery Point at RR70 take Wave of Mutation. The Issue with WoM is that it is a good way to break Staggers. However it is also a 21s Dot, which works as an Ailment for your Healing Debuff.

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=14#13:10792:0:0:9:544:29

Aside from CJ being a solid CC Monstro scales points into Flail, which essentially is the Marauder's best “anytime” attack in terms of Damage. Corruption scales with Savagery, together this is a good combination to throw into rotation.

(You want to open always with TB. The Wounds debuff takes off the top of your targets total HP so if you do more then 1500 dmg before you apply it then you've missed out on the debuff. After that then you hit the armor debuff and heal debuff then TB will be up again. Use Corruption before you start using Flail. Keep your Armor debuff up every time the cool down is over, same with your Heal Debuff.)

At Higher Renown Ranks, with Gear in your pocket you could break off the Monstro support line and put points into Brutality, taking Growing Instability and Mutated Aggressor. These two abilities will pump your damage up but lower your Survivability. MA gives you burst, don't use it at the start of fights, use it when your target is half way dead to push it over the edge. GI is a risky tactic to use, because your burst is relative to your death. It is unreliable, however with guard and a healer it will rip people apart. I often times will go back to GI/MA support tree and run with a high wounds build so that I have more mileage.

Tactics.

Scything Talons
Brute Force
Deadly Clutch
????

The Final Tactic, has many options. I tend to use Subvert Strength or Flanking. Growing Instability if in Brutality subspec.

Morale, Most use Confusing Movements. I do sometimes, but Sever Never is better for me. I find whenever you are looking to pop CM you are already screwed. When I think about all the times I was saved by CM I probably killed 3 more with SN. M2 I use Great Fang, M3 Tzeench Reversal and M4 Frenzied Assault. In the end, saving past M2 is a waste of time. M2 is good for clusters and Morale Pushes, whenever a Morale Push is called in Vent I always go and use M2 when the enemey is at about 1/3 health and steal some kills. At RR80 your moral hits for 1224, undefendable, unmitigated.


This is the best PvP set up I have discovered in almost 2 years of playing a Marauder. It's fairly standard, I've been experimenting a lot

Upcoming Blog Series and ... what was the best...

Coming up on this blog will be a series of blogs on How to play a Marauder effectively. For those people rolling marauders or just having trouble making the class work I'm going to offer my views on the class from builds to gear to rotations to how to fight specific classes.

I'm no real authority, I just have played this class since release practically and have managed to gather a lot of experience that new Marauders might find helpful. Don't flame, if you don't like my posts, deal with it. If you think i'm bad, then deal with it.

Anyway, in that spirit I wanted to share the 5 days that I had when I went with the ultimate asshole Marauder build gear set that let me 3v1 or more with relative ease. Granted, really great players or premades will own anyone. But I was soloing a lot because that build let me do it. This was before the Riposte/AP Drain Nerf.

here goes.

Mastery

Savagery, up to and including Draining Swipes with all the abilities in the tree. Monstro up to the Knockdown (incl the KD).

Renown

Weaponskill, as much as you can get. Max out your Parry, and whatever I had left put into Melee Crit and renown tactics.

Gear
Tyrant 4 piece bonus (Helm, Shoulders, Chest and Gloves) Dark promise 2 piece bonus (Boots and belt)

5 Piece TOVL Set for the %5 dmg %5 crit 108 Melee Power

Weapons
RR75 Crit Royal Weapons

Tactics
Scything Talons
Riposte
Exhaustive Strikes
Deadly Clutch.

Wounds Melee Crit Talisman.

Basically, %40 Parry, %30 Crit. I still had 1010 strength before any sort of buff (Zealot or Chosen). With Riposte Crit and ES Up I could lock down groups attacking me left and right, I could disarm anyone 1 on 1 to save my KD for when he called for help. This was especially effective against (obviously) any Melee Class, and mostly against White Lions (due to high AP costs) but really messed with Witch Hunters, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves when all they would see are parry parry parry and then out of AP on top of me hitting them with my own attacks.

In Duels I was completely unbeatable with the exception of DPS Archmages or very very skilled Shadow Warriors who still the best I fought lost. But without any sort of Disrupting abilities and all the CC a AM gets they're tough in any build to beat. BW's are a joke in duels since on Badlands they start with 0 Combustion and if their opening burst doesn't get me to 2/3 health they won't have enough to compete with my damage.

Anyway, I loved that build and I miss playing with it. It is just not effective anymore with ES now hopeless. Lossing the Riposte crit isn't so bad, but it just revolved around the %25 AA haste crit and riposte to completely leave people standing still.

Mythic, use your Unlock System, stop the rr30s from stealing Sovereign

It's getting silly really when low level characters roll on gold bags in Stage III. First of all, if you are on an alt(especially) in a warband of people who are your guildies or alliance-mates who are able to wear that shit then for the sake of not being a total asshole, OPT OUT.

Last night we witnessed it in two city defenses, low level people rolling on Stage III and Stage II when they can't even wear conq gear saying that they want the purple bags, which I don't buy for a second. I would love a Warlord Weapon to add to my pile of gear but I opt out every stage I and II because I want relm-mates to get gear they can use to motivate them. I hate it when I have a guildie who is RR80 sitting on 6 purple bags because some rr41 Chosen decided to roll on gear he'll never wear.

Mythic, you need to fix this system. I thought about it this morning while making my breakfast (it was awesome btw, mmm) and figured, just use your ward system to define what one is able to roll on.

For example, if you don't have your Warlord unlock, you cannot roll on Gold bags in Stage 3. If you roll, the only thing that you roll on is Purple bags and you leave the Gold bags to people who have the Ward that comes from full Warlord.

There, fixed. Your lowbe toons can roll on those precious purple bag weapons and the higher RR people aren't ganked out of their Sov gear.

Or you can give another level of Gold bags and toss in 2 Warlord Gold bags so that they can get to their Warlord gear a little quicker.

I understand the 'grind' aspect to this game when it comes to gear. Mythic wants to keep people with something to do while they work towards their next patch. Now, we've heard next to nothing about 1.3.6 or even a whisper about a 1.4 patch!

With my sub up in 6 weeks, I'm unmotivated to resub because of this. I'm 6 of 8 pieces of Sovereign and I'm fine with not finishing the set. I have my royal weapons and am accumulating Royal Insignias for no good reason. I am Full Tyrant, Renown 80 etc etc etc. Besides grinding sovereign out what is there left?

Not to be a negative nancy, I just am looking to see wtf is Mythic going to do.

At this point I'm looking to reroll to another server with some guildies and just 6 man some shit for fun. I like a lot of the Order classes and while I have 2 40s on Iron Rock, that server doesn't do anything for me. I like to play with the guys I play with now and so I'm trying to organize a reroll for a few of us for when it gets quiet on Baddielands.

Oh and on a fun note for some reason I got promoted to officer last night. I dig that, and thanks. I am happy to be in DN, what a great group of guys and some excellent players!

In a Game of Numbers...

Here are some numbers I live with.

I won my Sovereign Chest last night. Sadly this almost comes as a disappointment considering the Tyrant Chest is superior for my current build situation as well as making future gold bags increasing the chance of winning a piece I already have. I feel at this point I have optimized my gear build even though I would have preferred to have won my Back piece over my chest.

I'm currently rolling with the following

Helm - Sovereign (w/ +23str)
Shoulder - Tyrant (w/ +%3 Melee Crit)
Chest - Tyrant (w/ +23str)
Gloves - Sovereign (w/ +35 Melee Power). In Situations with solid healing I use Tyrant Gloves for more power (because Tyrant gloves and Sovereign are closer in power then Tyrant boots and Sovereign Boots (which Sov boots imo are vastly superior)
Belt - Sovereign
Boots - Sovereign (w/ +23str)

Glyphs + Backpiece from Tovl
Two RR75 Crit Scenario Weapons (w/ +23str)

Wounds/Melee Power Linimient
660 or better Armor Pot

I end up with stats that look similar to this (roughly, things always change)

Strength 1050 and change (not including a buff from a Chosen or a Zealot which I always have)
Wounds 9300
Toughness 180ish
Weapon Skill 450ish
Initiative right around 400
Melee Crit is %31
Armor Pen is %33
Parry is %25

My Damage Bonus is 270 + %5 = 283.5

"Keybindings," the crazy world

So there are 'clickers' and 'real players' (I kid I kid. One of the best WE and Chosen I know are clickers.). I like hearing from other players about keybind set ups because I'm relatively new to this sort of game (MMO) and I thought I'd share some of my keybindings and hell maybe even help some people out trying to get more efficient. lately this is a goal of mine, to have to not work hard to get my rotations off effectively. So here are most of my important bindings for my Marauder.

F1 F2 and F3 are my mutations (Savagery-Brutality-Monstro). Typically I do not stance dance, however spamming some Demo or getting a quick Ferocious Assault off can really make a difference in Survivability. Not having to click or really have a long reach lets me swap my stances quickly. I hate the 5s cooldown but oh well, that's what we are stuck with!

The Number key-panel on my keyboard is important for a few quick reaches from my mouse hand. My Morales are 1 2 3 and Zero (M4). My "+" is officer Pot, Shift"+" is my regular 3k HP-Pot so I can quickly double pot in situations that it calls for it.

For Actions I use buttons 1 thru 4 as such.
1 - Debilitate (Snare)
2 - Flail (anytime Spam combo)
3 - Thunderous Blows (Wounds DB highest dmg ability)
4 - Deadly Grip (Disarm) * requires Parry

then I go with letter and command letter combos such as the following
F - Cutting Claw (Armor Debuff)
R - Terrible Embrace (Pull)
T - Tainted Claw (Heal Debuff)
V - Wave of Mutation (AoE Dot and Debuff)
C - Concussive Jolt (Cone AoE Knockdown)
Z - Charge
X - Growing Instability (Magic Barb)
U - Crook of Radiance (Undefendable Pocket Item)
H - Summon Mount

I Use my Mouse Buttons a lot here is that set up
M4 - Draining Swipes (AP regen Debuff)
M5 - Guttripper (insures next action crits) * requires Parry
M3 - Wave of Horror (AoE Detaunt)
Shift M4 - Mutated Release (Root/Snare break)
Shift M5 - Mouth of Tzeentch (Cone AoE Interupt)
Shift M3 - Golden Eye Rah-Nutt (3.5k Melee Absorb)
Shift F - Rend (sing target DoT)
Shift 1 - Muated Energy (Ranged KD) * requires Disrupt
Shift V - Corruption (Toughness Debuff)
Shift T - Touch of Rot (Melee Barb)
Alt 1 - "Call" (calling Mod)
Alt 2 - "Assist" (calling Mod)
left Control - Push to Talk in Vent

I click my Liniments and Armor Pot as well as Fault Finder. I Turn with my mouse but I also use the WASD to move as well and I use Q and E to strafe, I need to work on that because that opens up some sweet bindings, yet I don't know if I can get used to that change. I want to find better, more comfortable binds for pots and morals probably something that would be easy to do. I'm thinking Alt Mouse Buttons for Pots but that probably is too easy to Pot by accident...

Alts alts alts

Lately I've been playing a lot of Alts. I've got my White Lion to 40(rr28 LOL) and have been working on leveling a friends Zealot (r26) as well as my Iron Breaker (15/15).

So far all are very fun classes. I certainly understand the woes of the White Lion, even looking from the eyes of a low level T4 with utter shit for gear, still I can see the problems with the class. Either way, it's fun. I like the mobility of the class as well as the potential for the burst damage!

Truth be told, I'm not one for healers. I have a 32 DoK which I think is boring to heal with. However, the Zealot is fun. I like not having cast times unless I'm group healing. In T3 we ran around this week with a warband led by guys in my Guild and we had so much fun. Man, T3 keeps are the most fun to defend and attack. I like healing with the zealot, and I'm hoping my buddy decides not to bother to come back so I can keep it as an alt.

The Iron Breaker however is my new project. Man oh Man what a great class! At rank 15 I'm a punting machine, boy I was at the keep in Brak Var just punting Destro off the ramparts left and right just keep punting their Tanks off and the lord resets or switches agro to a squishie. I can punt and knock down and snare all effectively and hell I can do some damage as well... not really that much but enough so that I don't really worry about small situations 2 on 1 or whatever. Fun as hell. Makes me want to finish it and play it regularly. But leveling really in all honestly drives me nuts.

Also I have a 15/15 Archmage that I'm playing pure DPS, screw healing! It's fun as shit also.

The Return of ORvR

I was a Dark Crag Destro.

ORvR was something that we were bred to do I think. Fighting the Ruin Zerg was a day by day experience. I think it burnt me out on the Lakes and since coming to badlands haven't been out there much, instead stick with Scenarios because I find them more fun. However, man the RvR Lakes on Badlands are amazingly active, especially the last 3 or 4 nights.

One of my primary concerns with the new City mechanic of awarding lewtz regardless of who's City is contested was that it would kill ORvR Completely as one side would zerg and the other would let them into the city just for the purpose of getting to do the instances. It has proven to be not so, in fact the other night things were so intense that I don't think that any city was Contested as Destro and Order bashed it out over all 3 zones probably with anywhere between 10 and 12 warbands active in the lakes. I was happy to see it and even dusted my ORvR Chops off and killed Andy in the lakes (muahahahahaha, or so he told me).

Well I'm happy to see it. Even last night I was in an Alliance WB before the Blackhawks/Flyers game. I should get my Sorc out there for some renown!

What's Next?

Andy from Mythic frequents the Badlands IRC server, usually in the morning probably before the task masters at Mythic crack their whips. He's a good guy and isn't afraid to answer questions, something I think is very important from a Company to Customer point of view.

I like what he had to say about the next patch, although the producer notes obviously are not going to give out a lot of information. He didn't give out much himself only that he's excited for the Zealot/RP changes and that there might be some cool changes for Magus as well! Nothing for Marauder no doubt and that is good, because ussually patch notes for Marauder is nerf or nothing and I'd rather take nothing atm.

With my Subscription up in August, I feel a need for Mythic to offer something substantial by the end of the summer to make me resub. It isn't for a lack of enjoying the game but more for a lack of the feeling of progression. I think that in 10 weeks from now most of my Sovereign should be in my vault or at least enough pieces to make the combination work in a way that I felt like I have obtained all the gear that is worth obtaining in game. I don't have a desire to take another toon to RR80, especially not a Destruction toon yet simultaneously don't want to play on any other server then Badlands. I don't want to pull a Plumpjack and delete Kruelhand in favor of rolling some other toon on Order side and I guess I could deactivate this account and start another. I've had a back up Order account on Badlands but it's subscription has run out as well.

So I'm curious about hearing more about the next patch and future patches. I might leave in August but to return sometime late in the fall... who knows. I do not buy into any "doom and gloom" about this game going under even if the subscription rate is falling. After something as serious as the billing facade you have to expect something like that to happen. Now I hear about ppl being hacked. While I think the hacking is no where near as rampant, tis a serious issue that I'm confident Mythic will resolve.

Sov Helm

Yay got my first Sovereign piece this morning, my helm.

Gotta say, best looking helm in the game!